Storytelling in Miniature

Hans Sebald Beham
German, 1500–1550

St. Andrew and St. Thomas

Engraving, 1520
2 7/16 x 1 3/4 in.
Museum purchase, 1912.1082

Hans Sebald Beham (commonly known as Sebald Beham), was born in Nuremberg in 1500. There is the possibility that he trained with Albrecht Dürer, especially since in 1528 he plagiarized an unpublished Dürer manuscript (Art of Measurement), suggesting that he had access to Dürer’s papers. After the Nuremberg publisher Hieronymus Andrae printed Sebald’s book on the proportions of the horse, and his dishonest act was discovered, he was exiled from Nuremberg.

Years before this, in 1521, Beham publically insulted a priest by saying that he preached the gospel like an evil scoundrel. His troubles with the Church and public authorities resulted in his first expulsion from Nuremberg in 1525.

The print is from Beham’s series Christ and the Apostles.